By Honorary Reporter Minnath Azeez from Sri Lanka

Photo = Flickr, Yonhap News

Pepero is a popular snack brand in Korea. (Flickr)

Koreans on Nov. 11 celebrate Pepero Day, which is similar to Valentine's Day but held in autumn and named after a popular snack.

Lotte Confectionary rolled out Pepero for the first time in 1983. The chocolate-covered bread stick is long and thin and great for dipping in coffee, as well as being a popular gift for couples.

Over the years, Pepero's flavor selection has grown from just one, chocolate, to 10 including strawberry, almond, tiramisu cheese and peanut. Ten years after the snack's debut, Pepero Day was born.

Among the many stories on how this day started, a famous one is about two schoolgirls from Seoul's Yeonnam-dong neighborhood. They ate Pepero on Nov. 11, 1994, in the hope of becoming tall and thin like the snack thinking that eating something shaped like a stick on a date resembling sticks would make them tall and slim.

The story caught on and grew so famous that many in Korea began eating Pepero on Nov. 11 every year. In 1997, Lotte designated Pepero Day.

Garaetteok Day is also observed on Nov. 11. (Yonhap News)

Another occasion marked on Nov. 11 is Garaetteok Day. Set by the government in 2006, this day honors the nation's farmers and rice, a staple for Koreans.

Garaetteok is a long and cylindrical-shaped rice cake that resembles the number 11, thus Nov. 11 honors this food. It is made by pounding steamed rice flour with a wooden hammer and dividing the dough to form long and flexible white sticks. When produced en mass, certain machines are used to give the rice cake its unique shape.

Garaetteok can be eaten plain without sauce and used in a variety of dishes. It is the main ingredient of the famous tteokguk (rice cake soup) eaten every year on Seollal (Lunar New Year), as well as of tteokbokki (spicy rice cake) and tteok kkochi (rice cake skewers). Garaetteok is also mixed with budae-jjigae (spicy sausage stew) and dakgalbi (spicy stir-fried chicken).

enny0611@korea.kr

*This article is written by a Korea.net Honorary Reporter. Our group of Honorary Reporters are from all around the world, and they share with Korea.net their love and passion for all things Korean.